CHAPTER 197: RING AND THE RUMOR

Morning found them both heavier than usual.

Not from the eggs—though Inigo had insisted on cooking three each, "for balance"—but from the ring now locked in the guild’s vault. It wasn’t on their table, it wasn’t in their hands, but they could still feel its weight in the air, like iron hidden beneath the floorboards.

Lyra laced her boots slowly, eyes distant. Inigo tied his apron. Neither spoke until Riko banged open the shutters and a wave of plaza chatter rolled in.

"People are already chanting out there!" Riko crowed. "They’re saying you two stole gold from a lord’s hand while he slept!"

Lyra groaned. "We were seen. How in the blazes does that become asleep?"

"Because songs are lazier than facts," Inigo muttered, flipping the fryer flame to life.

The line was thick before the skillet even warmed. Nobles leaned on canes they didn’t need, apprentices still in ink-stained robes whispered guesses about which lord would fall, and merchants shoved each other like children just to get closer to the counter.

Lyra worked the orders with clipped precision, her bow never far from reach. Inigo salted fries with the same discipline he’d salted the road at Harrows’ Notch—measured, exact, no wasted motion.

At the far end of the line, a bard already sang: the cook with a knife that cut through lies, the archer whose arrow stitched the skies...

Lyra nearly snapped the paper she wrapped a burger in.

By midday, Elise appeared—again not as a customer, but as the inevitable storm they all knew she was. She leaned across the counter, speaking low.

"The cipher’s been tested. The ledger opens clean. Ten names. Four houses. One merchant guild."

Inigo slid a basket of fries across the pass without looking up. "And what happens to them?"

"Tribunal meets tonight," Elise said. "Quiet, for now. But rumor spreads faster than rulings. Expect noise."

Lyra’s gaze flicked to the crowd outside the stall, restless with hunger and gossip alike. "We’re already drowning in it."

The noise came faster than Elise had promised.

That evening, when they flipped the CLOSED sign and scrubbed grease from counters, the knock that came wasn’t a guild runner’s. It was heavier, deliberate. Inigo opened the door a crack to find a courier in fine livery, bowing with exaggerated grace.

"For the heroes of Elandra," he said, offering a velvet pouch that clinked with coin. "A gift from Lord Rendal Aram, who wishes you continued... prosperity."

Lyra’s hand twitched toward her bow. "Bribe."

"Tribute," the courier corrected smoothly. "He says he admires your work."

Inigo closed the door without taking the pouch. "Tell him we admire quiet roads."

The man left, baffled, but the message was clear: nobles were already circling, trying to buy the story before the tribunal could write it.

The summons came before midnight. Elise herself fetched them this time, face grim. "You’re not just witnesses anymore. You’re symbols. The council wants you present when judgment falls."

The tribunal chamber was packed tighter than before. Not just guild officials now, but robed nobles, scribes, and a scattering of soldiers who looked as though they’d rather be anywhere else.

The ring lay on the table, gleaming under torchlight. The ledger beside it. Names had been inked in crisp clarity—names that made the chamber murmur with each turn of the page.

Lord Aram. House Veyr. Merchant Guild of the Three Keys.

Each name carried weight, and each weight pressed the air flatter.

Thorne presided, sleeves rolled, voice iron. "You stand accused not by rumor, but by record. Tolls taken under your coin, blood spilled under your silence."

The nobles protested, of course. Claims of forgery, of theft, of Platinum meddling where it didn’t belong. Lyra’s hand tightened on her bowstring at each word. Inigo only stood still, unreadable as stone.

When silence was finally forced, the tribunal’s decision was swift: investigation, seizure of assets, confinement for questioning. Not execution—not yet. But the tide had turned.

And every eye in the room knew who had pushed it.

Afterward, in the guildhall’s dim corridors, Elise caught them by the arm. Her voice was low, urgent.

"You saw how they looked at you. Half the chamber wants you sainted. The other half wants you buried. That ledger didn’t just cut nets—it slit throats. Don’t walk alone. Not anywhere."

Lyra’s lips thinned. "They’ll try to hit us?"

"Not directly," Elise said. "But accidents happen in alleys. And nobles can afford patience."

Inigo adjusted his belt, calm as ever. "Then we won’t walk alone. We’ll walk together."

Morning came heavy again. Yet when the shutters opened, the line was there, thicker than ever.

"Two doubles!" Riko shouted, voice cracking with excitement and fear alike.

"Fries up!" Maddy added, ladle in hand like a weapon.

The fryer hissed, the crowd roared, and through it all ran the current of something larger than food: legend. Customers whispered of the tribunal, of nobles pale-faced as the ledger’s pages turned. They called Inigo and Lyra not just cooks or Platinums, but judges.

Lyra hated it.

Inigo bore it like salt—necessary, stinging, but manageable.

When the last bun sold and the shutters closed, Lyra slumped into her chair with a groan. "We can’t keep doing this. Fighting nobles by night, frying chicken by day. One will kill us before the other."

Inigo stirred the skillet, calm. "Both feed the city. That’s what matters."

She looked at him, exasperated, then softened. "And if the city eats us alive?"

He cracked an egg, let it sizzle. "Then at least we’ll taste right, going down."

Outside, the city sang their names again, louder now, emboldened by tribunal whispers. Ballads grew more elaborate, turning Mardel into a dragon and the ledger into a sword. Children played in the street, shouting, "I’m the cook! I’m the archer!" while swinging sticks like bows and spatulas.

Elise appeared at dusk, leaning in the doorway. "Enjoy the calm. It won’t last."

Inigo flipped the egg, unbothered. "It never does."

Lyra’s eyes, sharp and wary, tracked the window, the street, the shadows that moved just a little too slowly. "Then we’ll be ready."

And with that, the night pressed close—heavy, uncertain, but alive with the knowledge that Platinum prerogative had teeth, and that the cook and the archer were still standing, side by side, fryer flame steady as ever.